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Former Maxis developer Bryan Shannon, a member of the team that worked on the ill-fated 2013 SimCity, has been creating content for Cities: Skylines on the Steam Workshop since he was laid off in the studio's recent closure.

Now he's set up a Patreon to continue his modding work, asking for donations for each building model that he creates for Colossal Order's excellent city builder.

In this industry it's not often that hearing a studio is being closed down genuinely surprises you, but I'm left fairly shocked by the news that EA is shutting the doors at Maxis Emeryville, the studio's main headquarters, for good.

Well, maybe 'surprised' is the wrong word; despite the well-publicised disaster of SimCity and the negative response to the removal of several features from The Sims 4, I somehow simply assumed that Maxis, who've been around since before I was even born, would continue on regardless.

Ah, SimCity. Once you were the king of city-building simulators, beloved by all. Now you're basically the slightly wonky-looking kid at the party that nobody wants to dance with.

Perhaps recognising that even with an added offline mode (that should have been there from the start) most people aren't willing to forget the ridiculous mess that was SimCity's launch, EA is offering a free trial of the game.